Management of maintenance and reworking of valuable equipment, such as vehicles and more particularly aircraft, can be time intensive and expensive. In the case of commercial aircraft, time during which an aircraft is not in service might result in substantial lost revenue as well as storage and maintenance fees. Thus, some commercial aircraft companies may place a premium on correctly performing maintenance or reworking of aircraft as quickly as possible. Any maintenance or reworking to be performed should meet or exceed all requirements or goals.
Maintenance of aircraft structure relies on a structural repair manual. It is time consuming for technicians to locate, within the manual, allowable damage limits (ADL) and associated repair procedures for any damage to an aircraft. A lack of adaptable and generic analysis tools can cause longer turnaround time for responding to service requests. As a result, some current service engineering support processes may be inefficient and complex.
Long service interruptions and high reworking or maintenance costs are undesirable. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus that takes into account one or more of the issues discussed above, such as increasing the speed of rework determination processes while complying with or exceeding all standards, regulations, and/or airworthiness requirements, as well as possibly other issues.